$48M in Financing Closes for Mixed-Use Project in Suburban Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.–It’s all systems go for Garfield Park, a 149-unit luxury mixed-use apartment project just outside of Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Va. Commercial real estate and capital markets services provider Holliday Fenoglio Fowler orchestrated a $48 million in financing on behalf of developer Ironwood Realty Partners to get construction activity underway.

Sited at 2900 10th Street, Garfield Park will be a true live-play property in the Rosslyn-Clarendon-Ballston Corridor, a submarket that has become the unofficial live-work-play capital in the area. “The Rosslyn-Clarendon-Ballston Corridor is one of the most walkable 24-hour neighborhoods in all of Northern Virginia,” Grant Montgomery, vice president with commercial real estate research and advisory firm Delta Associates, tells MHN. “It has retail, restaurants, services and amenities, as well as an office concentration, and it’s served by several transit options.”

In addition to its upscale apartments, the five-story property will offer such residential amenities as a community/entertainment room and state-of-the-art fitness center, and it will also feature approximately 26,300 square feet of ground-level retail space and underground parking to accommodate 295 vehicles.

Garfield Park will be in the right place at the right time. The luxury apartment market in Arlington’s Rosslyn-Clarendon-Ballston Corridor is seeing its relatively high occupancy rate climb higher and higher. “The source of demand is threefold,” Cindy Clare, president of Kettler Management, tells MHN. “First, people are starting to feel more confident again with the economy. Second, even though the housing market is picking up, people are not as inclined to go out and buy a home, even if they have the disposable income because lending requirements are tighter. Also, the investment value is not there. And finally, people still want to have a nice home, so they’re looking at the luxury apartment market instead.”

As Montgomery notes, the Rosslyn-Clarendon-Ballston Corridor is one of the strongest Class A apartment submarkets in the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. And its performance will only improve, as demand gets closer to outpacing supply. “In terms of development, there is not much going on,” he said. “Lyon Place at Clarendon Center is wrapping up and there’s The Views at Clarendon, which has a few market-rate apartments, but those are the only two projects that are delivering or under construction. The submarket is just 10 or 15 minutes from D.C.; it’s a highly sought after area and at least for the next couple of years, there’s going to be very limited development.”

With a location in a market with pent-up demand and a limited number of deliveries on the horizon, Garfield Park is well positioned for success, a fact that undoubtedly impressed the lender. The financing HFF facilitated for Ironwood came in the form of a three-year construction loan from Wells Fargo Bank. If all continues to go as planned, Garfield Park will make its debut in the summer or fall of 2012.